ArabFinance: Brimore was founded in 2017 by Mohamed Abdulaziz, Ahmed Sheikha, and Mahmoud Refaay, each with extensive experience in FMCG, direct selling, logistics, and distribution. Dissatisfied with ineffective tools to empower emerging brands at the time, the team banded together to launch Brimore, a new platform and marketplace to empower up-and-coming local brands with the power of social commerce.

Arab Finance sat with Ahmed and Mohamed to discuss how they launched Brimore, their vision, and goals, and how their idea was able to generate well over $3.5 million in funding to further invest in and expand their platform.

Can you tell us a bit about Brimore? How/when did you decide to launch the company? And whats the story behind the name?

Brimore was founded in 2017 by Mohamed Abdulaziz, Ahmed Sheikha, and Mahmoud Refaay. Each of us have extensive experience in FMCGs, direct selling, and distribution management across various multinationals, and throughout our experience I think we shared the same confusion and maybe frustration at why local emerging brands just could not garner the same ability to push themselves to become mainstream as more powerful brands.

This is when we pooled our collective resources, knowledge, and experience to launch Brimore, a name that merges the words bring" and more." When we first launched, we had a manufacturing-focused mindset, but later on we shifted our model to become a direct-selling distribution platform that connects manufacturers with consumers.

Today Brimore provides SME manufacturers with direct access to local communities that can promote and consume their products.

Why focus on e-commerce, and why on women in particular?

With our collective backgrounds, especially that of Mohameds, which focuses on end-to-end distribution, we believe we have a direct answer to solving the problem of getting emerging brands noticed by providing them with a powerful community network that markets and sells their products.

People tend to trust those within their communities, and generally will heed their advice and product recommendations. If your friends suggest a particular food venue or product, or recommend something in particular, you are more likely to try it than some other marketing source.

It was this social aspect of e-commerce that was particularly interesting to us, and it was this idea that we wanted to leverage and turn into a direct marketing tool.

Around 92% of our distributors are women who want high-value jobs and the option to work from home, and 50% of our top performers never had a sales experience in their lives, but now they gain a decent income and started expanding beyond their homes. Many have of them have tens of people in their team, with demonstrated leadership and growth, and they are forming a powerful tool for market penetration.

How much of an investment was needed to get Brimore up and running? How many employees do you have?

When we first launched, we actually started with a manufacturing mindset, so we had some capital to create products ourselves privately. That was mainly the investment we had initially for private label, but later on when we pivoted the model to also list other and unknown brands, we actually started from a zero cash level. We had only our goods and we listed other goods from other suppliers, and we kept working like this for around 7 months until we got our first investment from Flat6Labs, which was around $60,000.

When we started, we had five employees, but now Im glad to say we have grown to around 700.

Lets talk about Brimores e-commerce solution. How does it work exactly, and how do you monetize?

We approach local SME suppliers or the suppliers come to us for a particular product or set of products. This could include home appliances, cookware, clothing, shampoo, or any number of locally manufactured products and goods produced by emerging brands.

After extensive market study and pricing exercises, including focus groups and product testing, we then agree on a final market price. We then commit to buying a certain volume of the product(s) at a discount to this market price, after which we post the product(s) on our platform.

Each month, our platform highlights a particular portfolio of products that becomes available to our network of sellers/distributors, who then in turn sell these products at a profit using their own social networks.

These sellers/distributors use our app to put in their sales in a single combined order, which they then distribute to their own clients. So we do not actually sell to end-users ourselves.

We monetize via the margin generated from the sale of the products to our distributor network, and they in turn generate a margin from the sale to their end-users.

So what is Brimores role exactly in the transaction cycle? How is Brimore different from other e-commerce platforms?

We work for our suppliers to democratize market access. Basically, we power the technology and app platform for them to perform better in the market. For the manufacturers, we create a space for them to get their products out there in a way that can easily be marketed and demonstrated. For our sellers, we incentivize them by providing them with quality products priced in a way for them to sell, earn a profit, and because the whole process is gamified, the more they sell, the more points they collect, allowing them to earn even further commissions over the margins they earn.

Brimore processes 100% of its volumes, so we are not really a typical marketplace or operate on the premise of consignment. This is because we own demand creation and generation, which is what separates us from the other online players that may come across your mind. Other players may operate on a high volume, low margin premise but because of our unique business model, we are able to sell high volumes at high margins.

And again, we heavily leverage on the social aspect of our distributor network. Some 92% of users actually refer to word of mouth as the primary source or the primary influencer for purchases, according to a Nielsen study. If a platform can channel word of mouth, quantify it, and make it a reliable source of information, it will win a certain portion of transactions. This is what we are trying to do at Brimore. We want to capture the power of word of mouth, turn that into a marketplace, and reward the people who buy and refer the products.

Around 95% of our product portfolio comprises unknown brands, so we are relying on social credibility between sellers and potential buyers to conquer the hardest part of a transaction, which is reliability.

How big is your user base or distributor network?

We have over 75,000 app users comprising our network of sellers/distributors. Some of our sellers exceed EGP 1 million in monthly sales.

What conclusions can you make about e-commerce activity during and following the COVID-19 pandemic?

We actually saw a spike in purchases during the pandemic that, according to our analysis, was likely due to people spending more time at home and on social media channels. Our sellers are present on social media, so that naturally generated more traffic and increased exposure.

Additionally, we speculate that because many social occasions such as weddings, engagements, travel plans, etc were canceled, people redirected this money to purchase products geared at making their home life more comfortable, and again weve seen our sales reflect this.

How much have you been able to raise in funding so far, and what are your next funding plans?

We were able to raise $3.5 million in a pre-series A round led by Algebra Ventures. A year before that, we secured $800,000 in a seed funding round co-led by Algebra Ventures and Endure Capital, with participation from 500 Startups, Flat6labs, and angel investors.

This year we closed another funding round that will be announced soon.

What do OPEX look like for a company like Brimore?

We are able to cover 100% of our OPEX and earn a double-digit margin after covering our costs. Our top three expenses would be commissions and sales and marketing expenses, followed by operating expenses, followed by salaries and admin fees after calculating the cost of goods sold (COGS).

Can you make forward-looking statements about the market? Where do you see your industry in 35 years from now? Any plans to expand regionally?

We are eying expansion mainly in African and emerging markets where we believe we can add value. We see believe we can expand in some parts of the Middle East as well as some countries in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, as well as some parts of Latin America, but mainly our first expansion would be enough.

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